Tell Congress: Don’t shred Wall Street reform

Sign the petition

Petition to the United States Congress:

"Oppose new House bills shredding Wall Street oversight and reform. The proposed legislation would make it harder to hold corporations accountable for criminal behavior, sabotage financial cops, and create gaping loopholes in investor protections and corporate transparency."

House Republicans just launched a major attack on Wall Street oversight and investor protection.

At least seven new bills unveiled in the House would shred Wall Street reform, undermine regulators, and create gaping loopholes allowing companies to hide from investors.1 House Republicans are joining their Senate colleagues in trying to sabotage financial watchdogs by mandating long and cumbersome new analyses before regulators can act to rein in bad behavior.2 But they are going even further, helping companies avoid transparency – and even making it easier for criminal corporations to avoid punishment for their actions.3

We can’t let House Republicans and corporate Democrats approve these Wall Street handouts under the radar. And we need to make it clear to the Senate that the House legislation should be dead on arrival. At a time when Wall Street is raking in record profits while Americans continue to struggle, we need to show corporate lapdogs in Congress they will pay a price for Wall Street handouts.

Tell Congress: Don’t shred Wall Street reform.

The work of Wall Street reform is not done. The big banks are bigger than ever before. Hedge funds and the “shadow banking” system pose new, hidden risks. The 2010 Dodd-Frank law empowered regulators, but we have yet to make big, system-wide changes to a financial industry that is growing larger at the expense of the real economy.

Congress should be taking bold new steps to finish the job, not making things worse. But corporate Democrats have lent their support to efforts by House and Senate Republicans to sabotage Wall Street regulators. Tens of thousands of CREDO members have already spoken out against the Senate proposals. Now, House Republicans have unveiled equally disastrous legislation that would:

Sabotage regulators with unnecessary red tape, demanding time-consuming extra work from regulators under the guise of “cost-benefit” analysis, a strategy long-promoted by conservative activists as a way to paralyze financial cops with busy work.4

Make it harder for financial cops to crack down on criminal behavior, by limiting the Security and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) ability to directly bring administrative cases against companies with a judge’s approval, instead forcing it to meet far-higher criminal standards.5

Undermine investor protections and transparency, extending loopholes that allow some companies to not disclose their financial records for a decade, and creating new ones to help banks avoid rules designed to make sure investors aren’t hurt by dangerous or fraudulent financial products as they were in 2007.6

The House Financial Services committee just started considering these bills, hoping that Americans aren’t paying close attention during a busy election year.7We need to make it clear to members of the House in both parties that this legislation is nothing more than a Wall Street handout – and send a warning message to senators that they should oppose any bad ideas coming out of the House.

Tell Congress: Don’t shred Wall Street reform.

A package of Wall Street handouts in the Senate earlier this year was so extreme, even Wall Street-friendly regulators like Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White oppose it.8. The New York Times Editorial Board said that if the Senate provisions become law, “the winners would be big banks and big businesses. The losers would be ordinary Americans.”9

These new bills in the House are incredibly similar – and in some ways, worse. Republicans and the corporate wing of the Democratic Party are planning to shred Wall Street reform. We can’t let that happen.